Open credit cards: How much money can you throw at them right away? The ideal is to have none of them reporting over 10%, and at any given time, only let half or fewer report even that. The rest should be PIF'd (paid in full.) The easiest way to figure your target figure is to knock the last zero off each credit limit, and keep the reporting balance under that. So for instance, the CL on the Express card is $1050. Knock the last zero off to find 10% --> $105. Have less than that report.
If you can't whump them all down immediately, get all of them under 50%, and then start working on getting no more than half under 10% and the other rest PIF's. It will be simplest to have your small cards PIF'd --you can knock off more cards with the same amount of money, and it can really be hard to let 9% of a tiny CL report!
Send a GW (goodwill) letter to Victoria's Secret, asking if they would be willing to remove your 30-day late. WFN Bank is the bank behind this card. Type GW in the search box for ideas. There is also a thread on this in Frequently Requested Threads.
Closed credit cards: Is there still a balance on the closed Sears card? If so, you can PFD (pay for delete.) In essence, you and Citi (the bank behind Sears) cut a deal that you will pay them part or all of the balance due in exchange for them deleting either the reporting of the late or deleting that TL (tradeline) entirely. There's sort of a little dance you go through with this, so type PFD letter in the search box at the top left to see how it works. Make sure that when Citi accepts your offer, they send it in writing on company letterhead. You have plenty of other TL's, and this card isn't your oldest, so it shouldn't hurt to delete it. However, read through all the advice carefully. You don't want to re-awaken a sleeping monster.
I don't know if you should try to get the collection to go away. You didn't say how old it is, and you don't want it to suddenly pop up on EX! Someone on these forums who has experience fighting collection agency dragons would be the one to ask.
The other late payments: in general, if you owe anything, PFD, if you don't, GW. I had always heard that it's impossible to GW off lates on student loans, but posters have reported success lately. Type student loan in the search box. (By the way, SL = student loan. Every now and then I see "SL" and draw a complete blank!)
How old are the lates? It's never good to have lates (tell me about it), but if they are only 30-days and over 2 years old, they aren't doing nearly as much damage. The 60- and 90-days hurt a lot more, so if you can get them gone, that will help.
I would think that you would get a nice goose to your scores just from paying down or off the current cards. Without knowing how old the lates are, it would be hard to guess how much and how soon you could hit 680. I'm guessing it will take some fierce determination and lots of letter-writing on your part. Good luck!
If you can't whump them all down immediately, get all of them under 50%, and then start working on getting no more than half under 10% and the other rest PIF's. It will be simplest to have your small cards PIF'd --you can knock off more cards with the same amount of money, and it can really be hard to let 9% of a tiny CL report!
Send a GW (goodwill) letter to Victoria's Secret, asking if they would be willing to remove your 30-day late. WFN Bank is the bank behind this card. Type GW in the search box for ideas. There is also a thread on this in Frequently Requested Threads.
Closed credit cards: Is there still a balance on the closed Sears card? If so, you can PFD (pay for delete.) In essence, you and Citi (the bank behind Sears) cut a deal that you will pay them part or all of the balance due in exchange for them deleting either the reporting of the late or deleting that TL (tradeline) entirely. There's sort of a little dance you go through with this, so type PFD letter in the search box at the top left to see how it works. Make sure that when Citi accepts your offer, they send it in writing on company letterhead. You have plenty of other TL's, and this card isn't your oldest, so it shouldn't hurt to delete it. However, read through all the advice carefully. You don't want to re-awaken a sleeping monster.
I don't know if you should try to get the collection to go away. You didn't say how old it is, and you don't want it to suddenly pop up on EX! Someone on these forums who has experience fighting collection agency dragons would be the one to ask.
The other late payments: in general, if you owe anything, PFD, if you don't, GW. I had always heard that it's impossible to GW off lates on student loans, but posters have reported success lately. Type student loan in the search box. (By the way, SL = student loan. Every now and then I see "SL" and draw a complete blank!)
How old are the lates? It's never good to have lates (tell me about it), but if they are only 30-days and over 2 years old, they aren't doing nearly as much damage. The 60- and 90-days hurt a lot more, so if you can get them gone, that will help.
I would think that you would get a nice goose to your scores just from paying down or off the current cards. Without knowing how old the lates are, it would be hard to guess how much and how soon you could hit 680. I'm guessing it will take some fierce determination and lots of letter-writing on your part. Good luck!
* bump *
Other posters, can you please take a look at what I posted about PFD's and about the collection? Once I'm out of my happy little 1-9% how-to, I'm a bit over my head! thanks
Other posters, can you please take a look at what I posted about PFD's and about the collection? Once I'm out of my happy little 1-9% how-to, I'm a bit over my head!
thanks
Hi asyiasmami. I agree with hauling. Pay as much on your open credit card balance right now, as much as you can comfortably do so. Your high utilization is really hurting you. And at the same time, start work on that closed Sear's account with a balance.
All total, your total credit limits of all your cc's = 7,600. Your total balances are 4,498. That gives you a utilization factor of 59.2%. You will see your scores improve with each incremental drop in utilization, with the prime target of 1%-10%.
In my opinion, the quickest thing you can do to improve your scores is to pay down those cc balances.
Case in point: in March 2007 I had a Transunion score of 521. I stopped using ALL my credit cards totally at that point. I paid ONLY cash and check. I withdrew money from savings, and paid down the balances. I did not use the cards at all for 4 months, while paying on the cc's.
In July, 2007 my scores had increased to 671 on TU. And in March,2007 I had a total of 34 lates on my credit report from all my cc's combined. Today it stands at 27.
I hope that helps a little. Good luck to you.
Message Edited by Sylviatob on 11-15-2007 10:17 AM
All total, your total credit limits of all your cc's = 7,600. Your total balances are 4,498. That gives you a utilization factor of 59.2%. You will see your scores improve with each incremental drop in utilization, with the prime target of 1%-10%.
In my opinion, the quickest thing you can do to improve your scores is to pay down those cc balances.
Case in point: in March 2007 I had a Transunion score of 521. I stopped using ALL my credit cards totally at that point. I paid ONLY cash and check. I withdrew money from savings, and paid down the balances. I did not use the cards at all for 4 months, while paying on the cc's.
In July, 2007 my scores had increased to 671 on TU. And in March,2007 I had a total of 34 lates on my credit report from all my cc's combined. Today it stands at 27.
I hope that helps a little. Good luck to you.
Message Edited by Sylviatob on 11-15-2007 10:17 AM
